It seems that she has managed to avoid completely mucking up the entire business, but it strikes me as extremely shortsighted, ill advised, and definitively appears to be partisan (and there IS a political element here). I think anyone should have seen this coming- I certainly would have, and I am far from being a trained lawyer OR elected official.
Another thing that makes this a very bad decision is KNOWING beforehand that Republicans do tend to believe that all legal actions against any Republican is politically motivated. Way to give them the appearance of having a point when they cry: “PARTISAN WITCH HUNT!!”
Boy would it be a pleasant surprise to see an elected Democratic official do something with the appearance of competence!
I usually wait longer to give others a chance to have a say before I reply, but in this case . . . well, you phrased it better than I did. Please try to remember that I am a recovering Republican so every negative thing automatically gets a strong knee-jerk reaction. Also, the worst possible slippery slope is a likely result of any misstep.
Perhaps I overstated there, but damn- you couldn’t see THAT coming?!?!?!?!
My understanding is that she can still pursue a case against all the other fake electors, but this guy she cannot because she created a conflict of interest. There was something about how the thing was worded that made me think that if they wanted to include this one guy – then some other prosecutor would have to take over the entire case. I have no idea if I am understanding that fully or correctly.
In any case, it was a rookie mistake to have made and she IS guilty of showing extremely poor judgement which as others have said is an unacceptable unforced error. It has tarnished the entire prosecution and given the conspiracy hounds an opportunity to dismiss the entire thing – even if she eventually gets a conviction.
With the ability of this Trump crowd to escape consequences, I am very concerned that this might be the nail in the horseshoe of the horse of the rider in the battle that determines the entire war. Or put another way, John Wooden (literally my personal hero) would stop everything now and make everyone in the prosecutor’s office learn how to put on their socks and lace up their shoes for two entire practice sessions. We do not eff up the fundamentals!! We prepare – we prepare down to the smallest detail, and only then do we go compete. When we do that, then we cannot lose as long as we have done what we can to be fully prepared. This was shoddy work, no excuse.
(But I do understand that not everyone will see it as monumentally as I see it.)
I think that so far the Trumpers have been pretty much batting zero as far as challenging subpeonas.
This article suggests that Graham’s claim is basically the same one that was rejected when Jody Hice tried it.
U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican, filed a similar challenge in federal court after he received a subpoena to testify before the special grand jury. After hearing arguments from his lawyers and from Willis’ office, a federal judge last week declined to quash his subpoena.
U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May sent the matter back to Fulton County Superior Court, saying that there are at least some questions that Hice may be compelled to answer. If disagreements arise over whether Hice is protected under federal law from answering certain questions, he can bring those issues back to her to settle, she said.
If you have a system where prosecutors are elected in a partisan basis, isn’t it normal politics that they would support other prosecutors and other political campaigns of the same stripe?
What makes this one so bad?
When is it okay for a prosecutor to do explicit partisan activities, and when is it out of bounds?
In the system I operate in, a prosecutor who is involved in partisan fundraising would be disciplined, possibly dismissed, because active partisanship is a conflict of interest.
How is a conflict of interest defined in a system where prosecutors are avowedly partisan?
I am far from and expert, but my understanding is that it becomes VERY real when any partisan activity involves anyone involved in a case you are working on.
By some standards, she did not endorse the opponent of a person she was trying to at the same exact time prosecute, but rather support a POTENTIAL opponent of the someone she was trying to prosecute. Technically she was opposing the primary challenger – not the subject of her prosecution. The result is that NOW, the person she showed favoritism to is the opponent of her subject of prosecution. She now has a personal connection to the subject of prosecution OUTSIDE the bounds of the courtroom. Bias can be claimed and rightfully so.
Imagine a high ranking judicial official who is hearing cases about say - - - election fraud. And then it turns out that this high ranking official has a wife who is working on one side of the cases he is hearing and even perhaps sending briefs to the court (or writing them for others to submit). Even though it is not the official himself – the fact that his wife is involved is (or should be) enough to prove he cannot be objective.
Working to raise funds for an opponent – or even a potential opponent to a defendant in a prosecution is quite enough to question the objectivity of that prosecutor. My initial point was - if I can figure that out — how the hell did a fully educated and experienced prosecutor not figure it out??
To address your question more directly, I suppose if she arranged a fund raiser for some other partisan candidate who was not potentially running against someone she has a courtroom connection to – it could be seen as passing the smell test. If she sent contributions to Democratic candidates in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Arizona – no violation. If she sends the same contribution to the opponents of everyone she is attempting to prosecute – duh! Conflict of interest!! The conflict is not that she has a partisan stand – it that used her partisan stand against someone she is prosecuting – the personal nature is the problem, not the partisanship.
Said another way, our US system is utterly polluted with reeking partisanship from stem to stern.
So we carefully try to distinguish between the smell of rotten days-old garbage and maggot-infested dead dogs, versus that of rotten days-old garbage and maggot-infested dead dogs with fresh homeless poop on top.
it takes a connoisseur’s nose to make that call, but we’re good at it. We have to be, as that’s all that’s kept the system from collapsing into R-based totalitarianism already. How much longer we can hold that line remains to be seen.
Eleven of the “fake electors” who participated in a plan to subvert the Electoral College have asked a judge to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from her probe into the Republican effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The group argued in a new court filing that they are each “inextricably intertwined” with Republican state Sen. Burt Jones, a fake elector who Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney recently ruled cannot be investigated by Willis after she hosted a fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic opponent.
“I know you agree it is critical that we hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards to avoid even the appearance of political influence as we carry out the Department’s mission,” he wrote. “It is in that spirit that I have added these new restrictions on political activities by non-career employees.”